Automation and top entrepreneurial income inequality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Koru, Omer Faruk
• 署名单位: Wesleyan University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2026.106144
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: labor share; long-run; GROWTH; rise; unemployment; polarization; ECONOMICS; DYNAMICS; POWER; MODEL

摘要

This paper develops a theoretical framework linking automation to the thickness of the top entrepreneurial income distribution, which is approximated by a Pareto distribution. In the model, entrepreneurs face convex labor costs, creating diseconomies of scale. Automation enables them to substitute capital for labor, mitigating the diseconomies and increasing returns to entrepreneurial skill, resulting in a decline in the Pareto parameter and a rise in top entrepreneurial inequality. I test the model's predictions using U.S. industry-level data on entrepreneurial income and CEO compensation, as well as firm-level data on employment and capital intensity. Consistent with the model's predictions, greater automation is associated with lower Pareto parameters of the top entrepreneurial income and employment distributions, as well as wider capital-intensity gap among top firms.